Play as child's daily activity is of vital importance to the overall child's development. Children learn from the first day through playing and exploring the surrounding space. Adults and the environment are important factors that influence the development of children's play, and that is wh yin this paper the aim was to explore the possibilities that outdoor play offers to children, primarly in public children's playgrounds. In order to provide the best possible opportunity for the child to play outdoors, it is necessary to approvide an adequate environment, materials and equipment, as well as to take care of the safety of children. In the empirical parto f this paper, research was carried out for the needs of which the Check list was constructed by which the public playgrounds were evaluated, their equipment, suitability and safety, also by means of collected photo notes and notes analysis of the play on certain children's playgrounds was made. There are 107 children's playgrounds in the public areas in the city of Osijek with suburbs, of which 20 are analyzed for this purpose, so that an equal number of children's play areas are selected from each part of the city. From the dana obtained it is obvious that the following equipment is the most common on the children's playgrounds – swings, slides, seesaws, carousels, small swings and sand boxes, and it was found that small swings are in the best condition and the sand boxes in the worst condition. The results obtained can serve as guidelines for equipping new playgrounds in the city or upgrading the existing ones to meet the needs of children, adults, and take care of safety.